Gay Country Music

And how it can help us transcend our political selves

I keep flashing to the moment of the Willie Nelson concert I attended in September when he introduced one of his guitarists, the legendary Waylon Payne. Payne should be legendary even though most casual, and even many hardened fans have never heard of him.

I first wrote about him here:

Since then, I’ve listened to his music often, though I have a hard time getting past that one song, “Old Blue Eyes,” which makes me so blue that I have a hard time pulling my head back to its rightful place in my upright man’s stance.

But back to that concert moment: unlike out Country star Orville Peck who announces the fact that he’s gay on every arena stage he takes, Payne is more discreet. Or at least he was at Willie’s show, even as he sang an incredible version of his mother’s big hit, “Help Me Make It Through the Night.”

I keep wondering, though: what if Waylon had announced and then advocated for his rights as a gay man from that stage in somewhat rainbow-colored Charlotte, NC? How would the crowd of hippies and cowboys, upwardly mobile urbanites and booted suburbanites have responded? Sure, Willie commands a fairly liberal crowd, but how much of that is due to the marijuana, and how many know Willie’s 2009 song — the should-be standard “Cowboy Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other?”

What if Willie and Waylon had sung this one together? There were some pretty drunk concert-goers that night, and would the woman who had to be carried out on a stretcher have woken up then and shouted “Hell yeah,” or would the the two men standing two rows in front of us — who swayed together most of the night — not have left a couple of songs early?

And yes, Willie knows Waylon, knows his story and his truth. How much do we, should we care, and before you say that this really shouldn’t matter, who’s kidding whom? You know it does, if for no other reason than me and you and everyone we know consider country music to be so conservative that all we can see are overweight straight white men in hats and boots ready to kick our ass just for suggesting that another man could possibly be attractive.

I’ve admired Willie for a long time, and I do think Waylon Payne is attractive and so is Ethan Hawke whom I saw last night on the penultimate episode of Reservation Dogs.

As I stood and listened to Waylon play that night, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to be there. I didn’t know he was with the band; I didn’t know I’d get to see him then; I didn’t know that in six short months, I’d be seeing two queer country stars (saw Orville last April), and when I think that just three years ago I didn’t know, couldn’t have named, one single queer country artist, I see just how behind the queer times I really am.

This also puts me in mind of a story I read today by Esther Spurrill-Jones on another site concerning the queer movement in Contemporary Christian Music.

You know, for some people, ain’t nothing sacred anymore. But has any music, any genre, any cultural moment ever been strictly same-sex exclusive?

Trying to pinpoint where this all started is ridiculous because though Chely Wright, according to music historian Nadine Hobbs, “became the first mainstream LGBTQ country star to come out publicly,” (Hobbs, Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music, 143) in 2010, haven’t our heroes always been humans? And haven’t humans always been…well, maybe less than open and honest about who they are, given how adamant our society is that we all must subscribe to whatever we have deemed the norm to be?

Listen to Wright’s 20210 album, Lifted Off the Ground, and tell me why anyone should care about her sexuality. Yes, I know I’m the one here shouting out loud for queer country, but it’s important to disturb and defy our stereotypes and expectations, or else we will divide ourselves even further, especially at this time in our cultural awareness when some people don’t want us reading books like Gender Queer. Or, if they knew about it, Tranny.

I’m reading a bio of Tammy Wynette right now, and not that I advocate pulling anything off anyone’s shelves, but man, Tammy suffered a good bit of abuse — inflicted and received from her variety of husbands. Maybe our teens shouldn’t read all of this, either, but Tammy was pretty conservative, or at least she used to kiss George Wallace on the mouth even in front of his wife.

No, nothing much is sacred, though Tammy and George (Jones) and even Elvis used to love to sing sacred songs, and why shouldn’t they? And what if gay singers also sing the sacred? Do you care? Do I?

Finally, I get provoked by some of my liberal friends who don’t understand why I like Tammy or Merle or even The Marshall Tucker Band. I tell them that I can keep my music separated from my politics, and that’s true enough.

Today, I re-read this quotation by Nadine Hobbs and had to think again. Most of us identify country music with the white working class, and there’s definitely truth there.

But there’s more truth here, when we think about those stereotypes and all that they seem to obscure and omit:

“The Right…deploys racism, sexism, and homophobia to attract working-class votes, even as it crafts economic and social policies that benefit the rich and devastate the working class. The white working class…place a higher value on venting their antagonisms than protecting their own interests…In this environment, middle-class liberals and progressives have much to gain by making common cause with the working class and seeking out the places where their values and interests might align…Too often it seems middle class liberals and progressives would rather maintain moral and cultural superiority over the white working class than build alliances with them. They seem, that is, to place a higher value on venting their antagonisms than protecting their own interests (161–2).”

So maybe the place to meet is in the crowd at a Willie Nelson or Chely Wright or Kacey Musgraves or Orville Peck, or Charley Crockett concert.

Who knows what songs you’ll hear, what faces you’ll see?

Whose old blue eyes will meet yours before everyone begins crying in the rainbows?

Thanks to Kevin Alexander and The Riff for publishing, and hoping this touches the hearts of JP Timko and James Finn.